‘Blessed.’ How a Columbus pizza chef went from critical condition to world champ

Local restaurant owner Leo DiCesaris is a world-champion pizza chef.

DiCesaris, master pizzaiolo and owner of Cerrone’s Pizza, 7830 Veterans Parkway, won first place out of 110 entries in the 2025 International Pizza Expo last month in Las Vegas. DiCesaris is the first pizza chef in Columbus history to win this award.

For DiCesaris, the win is a testament to his dedication to pizza making. He has spent over two decades studying around the world and sunk hundreds of dollars into this competition.

“For me to win just is great because I’ve been traveling around, trying to hone these skills and really pouring in passion and love to this craft,” DiCesaris told the Ledger-Enquirer. “To finally see the results of all that hard work come to fruition was really incredible.”

Leo DiCesaris’ journey to pizza world champion

DiCesaris said making pizza honors tradition.

“For me, everything starts with the crust, and then you work on the sauce and the toppings,” DiCesaris said. “It’s just doing something authentic and truly representing what pizza is.”

DiCesaris started his culinary journey in New York, visiting pizzerias and “honing their secrets.” After a while of studying in New York, DiCesaris went to Italy to study at a Neapolitan pizza school, learning the traditional Neapolitan method of making pizza, which focuses more on a specific kind of dough creation and baking in a wood-fired oven. DiCesaris compared his experience in Italy to going to culinary school in the United States.

“It’s a long process,” DiCesaris said. “They have a whole class like you would expect at a culinary school, where you learn everything from grains of flour to all the procedures involved. You have a written test and a physical test, where you’re in front of the presidents of these organizations that are super proud Italians and are really protective of the Neapolitan pizza and their crafts.

“You make pizzas in front of them, and they grade you based on that. It’s a pass-or-fail kind of thing. It was just a really awesome experience.”

He then went to California to study under Tony Gemingnani, a 13-time winning pizza chef who owns nine restaurants throughout the country. DiCesaris opened his own restaurant after returning to New York.

DiCesaris has been competing in pizza-making competitions annually over the past 10 years, most of the time placing among the top 10 or 12 in the Southeast.

“For years, I’ve been constantly learning, perfecting and networking with other people that were competing and just learning from them,” DiCesaris said. “I finally got my breakthrough this year of making it to the top and winning.”

DiCesaris described the moment when he won as “incredibly emotional” because the win reflected years of education and trial-and-error recipes. He won by less than a point.

“You know you’re chasing something so long, and I’ve always been towards the top but never quite crested over the hill for the victory,” DiCesaris said. “The first thing I did was give God the glory and thank him for that because it was just something I’ve been chasing. He allowed me to finally get it, and it meant the world for me to finally — for all my skills, all my education, the years I put in, the money spent going out there trying to do this contest — to finally win.”

The winning pizza DiCesaris created is called “Summers in Spain.” It is a custom recipe inspired by Spanish cuisine, he said, and took weeks to prepare. The dough was a yeast culture made from fruits that matured over a few weeks to create a sourdough-like finish. The toppings are hickory and cherry smoked mozzarella, Iberico pig, green pears, toasted pistachios, arugula, a ricotta wine reduction, Manchego cheese and blueberry preserves.

Cerrone’s will offer a limited amount of the winning pizza for customers to try. More details will be available on their Facebook page. For new customers, he recommends ordering a pizza with your favorite toppings.

The origin story of Cerrone’s Pizza

DiCesaris’ family came to the United States in 1920 through Ellis Island, an immigrant processing station that welcomed over 12 million immigrants to the United States. His family settled in New York, where DiCesaris said he was influenced and inspired by the Italian cooks in his family.

“Around Christmas and holidays, my dad was always cooking pizza in the house, “ DiCesaris said. “I was always around Italian cooks. It was always an inspiration for something I thought I would do much later in life.”

The military brought DiCesaris and his siblings to Columbus. DiCesaris said he wanted to bring the brick-oven style pizza to Columbus, where there aren’t many places that serve it. He opened the restaurant in September 2015, naming the business to honor his family’s last name from when they first immigrated to the U.S. through Ellis Island.

“I knew pizza was the one that could be really successful here, and I really wanted to not do Southern pizza but create pizza that can stand with any pizza in the world, whether you’re on the West Coast, northeast Chicago or Italy.” DiCesaris said.

His culinary journey hasn’t been easy. In 2022, DiCesaris was in a head-on collision car accident while on the way to work. He suffered a broken femur, broken ribs and a punctured lung from the wreck. The recovery process was rough, DiCesaris said. It took a full year to get him to be“as normal as he can be,” and eight months of physical therapy to get back to walking and movement as normal.

DiCesaris said to go from critical condition to world champion pizza chef made him feel “blessed.”

“Coming from uncertainty or not knowing how things are going to go with your body or the future of your business, to being able to come back and do what you love and to hit this pinnacle of the industry,” DiCesaris said,“I’m blessed, honestly, really and truly, is the best thing I can say. I’m competing to give God glory through my talents.”

This story was originally published April 17, 2025 at 5:00 AM.